Comet k5 2009 mcnaught

Had an interesting question about seeing about comet. Would we be able to pull it up and look at it.

At first I thought it was a different comet as there are a lot of mcnaught comets it was easy to get confused as to the one we were wondering about.

K5 2009 is the one Robert was asking about. It's actually visible at 10pm in a big enough telescope. But it's at mag 12.6 and getting fainter as it moves away from the sun.

R1 mcnaught is bright -
4.7 magnitude on June 28 for r1

But it is to close to the sun and we can't see it because the sun would be making the sky to bright for us to see it.

Also r1 is too low for the c14 to see in the morning.

I'd write more here but I'm on my way to dinner.

Below is a photographic screen shot of the sky software showing the orbit of comet r1.







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A really rough idea of the view in the solar scope

You can't realty get a good idea what you'd see in the scope from this handheld shot taken with my iPhone.

The iphoe won't focus very well and you'll see a lot more detail with you're naked eye viewing through our solar telescope.


You need a special filter or telescope to view the sun. You can see the disk with pinhole projection but you're looking at it on a piece of paper or cast on the side walk or something.

A proper solar scope or safe filter can allow safe viewing but some make mistakes, so ask an astronomer before viewing the sun.

Never look at the sun unless you really know he safe way to view.

Do not use the following.
Don't use welding goggles.
Don't use old cheap filters sold many years ago.
Don't use even recent equipment unless it's been carefully inspected. Even new equipment can be damaged.

You dont want to look at the sun and possibly damage your eyesight. When in doubt don't look at it.

Interesting fact
A person could damage their eyes and even go blind without feeling any pain because the cells in you eyes that sense light have no pain receptors.

Two reflections from the lens can be seen in this photograph. Those are not visible but just a reflection from the glass hitting the iPhone camera.

The problem with the iPhone is it's too difficult to get good focus and exposure on a solar scope.

Hand held shooting makes it more complicated.





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We have sun visible in the solar scope.

There is some nice activity visible even through thin clouds today.

Difficult to say how long before we have complete overcast and rain.

Older members from the club might be interested in seeing the old blue telescope which is inside the dome right now. It's totally beat up from improper storage, but actualyy worked a little last night when I quickly threw the old mirror in it and took a look at the moon.

Here's a photo showing the shadow of the Lunt solar scope on the floor right now.




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I am hoping to open I may open up

Sorry about the typos


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I mat open up tonight of sky conditions hold up

It's supposed to rain tomorrow I may open up tonight when it gets dark out.

Tim Dey may come by the observatory after the fireworks if we are open.

It's mostly based on cloud conditions tonight.


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Solar observing during Saturday cruise

From 1 pm till 6pm

At the observatory.

We have a special solar setup.

Don't try this at home.

More to follow.


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A fun night but I felt like I was in a fight and lost

The mosquitos rose out of the grass and surrounding area like a huge swarm of, well Mosquitos. I was surprised and the ferocity of the insects at Lake Erie. I wondered if it could be the fact that we set up near the grass and some visitors and astronomers were in the grass behind the scopes set near the edge of the sidewalk. Someone pointed out we were near a swamp that was likely full of them and they would likely be attacking us as if a dinner bell went off.

I had some off and perhaps it helped some but I had the feeling at times it just tasted like barbecue sauce to our flying friends who seemed to continue to chow down.

The sky cleared up of most of the clouds and there was still some haze. Conditions would not be good for astrophotography, but they were okay for some viewing, not really great but most visitors seemed to be having a good time, while they were not fighting off attacks from the vampire like mosquitos.

One visitor said they were bitten twice on the eyelashes after having put "off" on.

A variety of objects were looked at, the sun, Venus, Saturn, the moon, the double double near Vega, and Venus and the beehive in the same field of view in my little f4 4.25 Bushnell telescope. Most of the objects and more were found and displayed in the other scopes, not my little telescopes which focused mostly on the moon and Venus and the beehive.

By 11 o'clock we had had enough of the flying pests and there we're other insects as well but of course they didn't bite. Millions of fish flies were flying and the swarm was so great near the swamp you could walk closer and hear their buzzing.

As the night ended of course it was getting darker. I took a shot of the stars and some of the telescopes. In this case I didn't announce I'd take this shot and try to have someone stay still to get a good exposure of astronomers or guests. It would be difficult to stop and poise for a photo with all the insects looking to land and chow down.

I can really appreciate the observatory and the sidewalk around it. If people stay on the sidewalk and mostly inside the dome and spray a little bit of bug repellent on them , away from the equipment, then you would avoid the massive mosquito fest that awaits you at a darker sky metro park.

(below a trail of red lights is seen as Gordon Hanson heads toward the nature center building with his red flashlight on.)
this is a 10 second exposure at 1600 iso, from the canon t1i.



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Some clouds some viewing Venus

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More visitors at the metropark

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Damien And Luke visit the metropark

Two visitors




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We are here at the Erie nature center

For beginners night




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Clouds and rain expected but I'll be at Erie metro park

Near three herminos Mexican see Map below.


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It's the astronomers weeknight curse

Basically there was clouds and haze while I was at the observatory tonight.

I was going to leave by 11 o'clock if nobody showed up. Noone came by and I basically took my time closing up the place. Noting a visitors entry and double checking the door to insure it was locked.

As I was walking to my car I looked up, the sky looked clear and fairly transparent. There might be some haze that I can't see, bit it looks pretty nice for observing. Most of the clouds have left.

But I have work tomorrow and have errands to run, so it's time to go. Bad weather while I was there, an astronomers curse.

Anyway I might break out a small telescope at home before I hit the bed.

I may set my alarm, get up early an look at Jupiter at about 5am or so. If the sky is transparent Jupiter might look really nice tomorrow morning or I should say in about 4 hours from now.

That's about all for now. I took some shots of the moon as it was in the clouds and haze. The ones from the canon were better than the lame iPhone attempts but I canonly post the iPhone attempts at this time because I'm blogging from the iPhone. Here's one, not really a good shot as it was handheld and using te iPhone.




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Location:Meadowbrook Rd,Northville,United States

I'm going to open the observatory tonight

Will be opening it around 10pm

No teachers will be there so kids should bring their parents if they want to look through the telescope.

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Conditions are hazy and cloudy this Sunday

Not a good night to open the observatory but a nice evening for a bike ride.

Later perhaps I'll work on editing the star stuff newsletter for the FAAC astronomy club.

Below is a photo from my bike ride.

I've been thinking about telescope building projects lately and reading up on unusual telescope designs. I think it would be nice to build a couple of telescopes, something unusual and out of the ordinary. Maybe even something that is kind of related to telescopes but not actually a scope.

Perhaps I'll post more on this later.

One of the scopes I want to build would literally hand on the wall, almost like an artwork display until you assembled it to use it to view the night sky with. It would be nice to have a telescope hanging on the wall of the observatory as a display piece and then assemble it align the optics and show people how it works.









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When I say the sun is active it's because of a NASA site/app

There is an iPad app called 3d sun which has just recently been updated for the ipads resolution.

Great photos of the sun are available in this free app



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Found a diamond?

There's a lot of solar activity on the sun right now. The clouds and heat are keeping me away fromthe observatory durin the day.

I found what appeared to be some kind of stone, diamond or cz or a cheap gemstone today.

This was on a floor.

Meetings fellow faac member for lunch, I took the mystery gem along to see what others would think of this.

Most seemed to think it some other type of stone, to reflective for a diamond.

I did some basic tests but couldn't be sure, I'm no expert in gems.

At home I got a closer look at it. There were several scratches on it's face. I don't think it's a diamond.

I took an iPhone stillof it using a 25mm televue plossl eyepiece. You can see the scratches in this.

Waiting for good viewing conditions. Greg







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Tracing the old history of the scope.

http://skynotesbyrich.blogspot.com/2008/08/august-4-2008-018-kenneth-f-novak-and.html

Found the above blog which mentions Ken Novak, who built and sold telescope parts in Wisconson. His sticker is on the back of the old mirror that was in the old 12.5 inch reflector at the Hector J Robonson observatory.

This may have meant he had something to do with the mirror, but it's more likely that this just means he was the person who sold us the mirror mount.

End of a productive night

Not a lot to report. The eyepiece cleaning had a little hitch, to be resolved. The sky 6 software and the Gemini mount are in sync with each other but still way off on the eastern side when the mount is on the west side of the meridian flip.

Some tech talk there.

Model need to be fixed or redone. I was too tired to reset any models tonight, have to turn in early.

Great viewing conditions tonight, unfortunately I'm too tired to be out late tonight.

The cool air after a cold front often will provide good seeing conditions.



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Amazing sun today

I just spun by the observatory to do some maintanance. Decided to check out the sun.

It's amazingly active today, huge prominances near the 6 o'clock position and activity elsewhere.

I'm getting a checker burger and then going back by. Any faac members in the area should give me a call if you want to take a look. I'll be cleaning a couple of eyepieces as well at the observatory.

Greg


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Sunday I went to the red bull air race

After avoiding the storm and making it back home I hoped to make it Sunday out to the riverfront in Detroit to watch the Red Bull air race.

This was fun and I took my camera along to try to shoot some stills and video. The canon camera was setup for low light photography for astronomy with a Hugh iso setting. I forgot to reset it to a lower speed and most of my stills were overexposed. I was in to much of a rush.

Here's a shot from my iPhone.

This shows the jumbotron video wall they have there. Those HD cameras really pull in great video of the event.

It was a fun but tiring day.



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One more photo at Riders

Here's a pair of telescopes on a stand where a more experienced astronomer can look up and show another person the sky and objects.

This has a refractor and small reflector designed as a comet catching telescope. What is a comet catcher? It's a wide field scope a visual astronomer might use ti search for comets. Usually f5 or f4. Something with a short focal length.

Of course comet catching telescopes that are used by astronomers are usually fairly big. In the past some comet hunters used large binoculars as well.




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Not much to talk about this weekend

The weather was not suitable for star gazing.

What's an amatuer astronomer to do when the stars aren't out?

How about a little trip to look at telescopes?

Saturday I drove out to Riders hobby shop to take another look at a Vixen binocular telescope. It's two telecopes attached together. It's high priced for some buyers out there and doesn't even come with a tripod at 900 dollars. Also that is a pretty low price compared to the prices I've seen on the net.

What do you get for 900? Two 80mm achromatic telescopes that have an internal barlow lens that increases the focal length to 900mm. So the binoviewisnt wide field like most short focal length scopes or binoculars. It's a compromise but can give usable powers in the 75 power range which will show some close views of the moon. The 3d effect you get from using a binocular configuration is lauded by many who have looked through ninocular telescopes.

But keep in mind an achromatic has color correction but not perfect color correction and may show some purple haze around bright objects. To get rid of that you need an apochromatic system or apo refractor and those are really pricey. Vixen makes a larger 125mm binoscope that is an apo and has higher quality, but it's in the 3000 dollar range.

Here's a picture of the lower end 80mm Vixen at Ridersin Ypsilanti Michigan.





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Not a lot of activity has happened the past few days as official events

I did take out my telescope by the site in a spur of the moment event.

We had a couple of club showings of the observatory. Not announced to people as open events, something I may go into later, but some visitors dropped by for a short tour as well.

The other night I took my own telescope out to compare it with the views of the observatory telescope. This is a large telescope and I viewed near the football field. Near the observatory. It took a while to setup the telescope of course. It's a lot easier and faster to just open up the observatory and not worry about doing all the things you need to do to setup a telescope.

Here's a photo from the other night, with a picture of my telescope near the observatory.

Of course the telescope is much closer to the camera. This is a big telescope, but not as big as the one we us inside.

As you can see this is a Newtonian reflector and has an eyepiece near the front of the tube. It's the same basic design that was housed inside the old observatory. It also is a very old "used" telescope, built back in 1962. This telescope is as old as the big telescope that used to be housed in the observatory. Some day if I have it out there you may get a chance to look through this old telescope.





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Last minute observing going on

I'm heading out there right now.

I'm taking "Big Bertha" with me and may set her up.


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